How were you introduced into the franchise?

[Kaiza_Toshiyuki]

For me personally, Its was when I was young. I saw my brother watching Dragon ball GT on TV, and asked what it was. He explained what he was watching, and told me if I was interested to start at Dragon Ball and work my way up to Z and GT.

[SpiritBombTriumphant]

I was 5. Came home from school and went to watch Johnny Quest on Toonami. Instead I saw some giant gorilla fighting a green guy who proceeded to blow up the moon.

[Forte224]

Toonami, the episode where Gohan and Kuririn were spying on Freeza and his henchmen in the Namekian village. I remember being hooked instantly and the whole thing was really intense for me. I really liked the scouters and power levels too when those Namekian warriors came in and hid their power levels at first.

As time went on, I assumed that weird guy lifting weights on the space ship was a side character.

[KBABZ]

DBZ sort of osmosised itself onto the school playground as the next big thing that was gonna kick the living shits out of Pokémon because of how hardcore and cool it was. I watched it after school but it never caught my interest. However I was instantly smitten by the original Dragon Ball half that I watched on Saturdays with my sister over pizza.

[MasenkoHA]

It was on Toonami which was already a block I was a watching anyways. I saw a few episodes here and there of the Ocean dub (I remember watching the catch bubbles episode, some of the Goku vs Vegeta fight, and some of the Namek episodes) didn’t start watching until Goku cs Freeza and didn’t really start getting into until the Trunks/Android saga

Ironic now that I think about that I now vastly prefer the Saban dub when I didn’t get hooked until sometime after Funi took over in-house

[TheBigBoy]

An issue of EGM in late 1993...I want to say September or October. I had Super SF 2 on the cover. They had a preview of the import Super Butoden. I thought it looked great, with wild character designs, huge energy beams instead of dinky fireballs and FLYING! Too bad it wasn't that great of a game.

I would read previews of the games in magazines for the next couple of years trying to piece together what exactly was going on with this cartoon. It looked cool as hell though!

In September 1996, I looked at the TV guide for Saturday morning and noticed that "DRAGON BALL Z" was airing at 6:00 AM on FOX 59. I knew I had to check it out. I started with episode 1. I had no idea what was going on but I was into it. By the 3rd or 4th episode when the main character DIED, I was hooked. It felt so ballsy for a show at the time. Even the super censored dub felt incredibly violent and intense. Remember, this was an era where Spider Man wasn't even allowed to punch people in cartoons. I forced myself to get up at 6:00 AM for the next 2 years to watch the show.

I was in 6th grade in 1996 and at the time I felt like I was getting a little too old to be getting up at the crack of dawn to watch a cartoon. As a result, I didn't really talk to anyone about the show. I didn't have internet access either. In retrospect, that was pretty cool because it felt like *my* show and no one else's. I could watch it every week and form my own opinions on it and have very little spoiled for me outside of what I had read in those EGM game previews.

[GT_Goten10]

My uncle showed me always DBZ videos on YouTube.. the fights & character designs impressed me so much that I wanted to know more So I started to watch DBZ from episode 1, but I never really cared much about DB or GT at this time

[Hellspawn28]

I remember I was introduced to Dragon Ball for my 6th birthday back in 1997 and it was the 1995 dub of Dragon Ball on VHS. I didn't like it when I first saw it while my sisters liked it. I remember it was this VHS cover



My dad got it for me because the guy at Suncoast told him it was a popular cartoon from Japan that kids around my age liked.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Toonami in the late 90s. At first I never really watched it, just saw the commercials, but I first actually started watching during the arc between the defeat of Raditz and the arrival of Vegeta. Toonami played all the episodes they had on a looped schedule so I watched up to the end of the Freeza arc, where they restarted from Raditz, then I didn't really watch much of the stuff I had already seen, then when I heard a new arc was out I decided to watch it, but it was the Garlic Jr. arc and I gave up after a few episodes because it wasn't really all that good. But later I saw commercials for the Trunks/Android saga that they had recently acquired and I thought that this looks pretty cool, so I would give the show another chance, and from then on I was hooked.

[Dbzfan94]

I saw a freaky bug man drink a guy through his tail. I think this was like 2001? On toonami. I was 7 and loved it.

But didn’t really keep up with it until the Buu saga and I heard Optimus Prime talking about how everyone killed by some guy named Majin Buu. Those promos were so cool back then

[ABED]

I lived in Japan in the early 90s so I heard of DB, but never saw it. My brother taped a few episodes and the Trunks TV special. I was flipping channels one Saturday morning in 1996 and heard a woman shouting "Goku!" I thought "I know that name." so I decided to watch it. It was the first episode of DBZ.

[sintzu]

If I'm not mistaking it was back in 2005 when I saw the first Tenkaichi at a game store. It was very different looking from what I was used to so I decided to get it and from there I got into the Z anime followed by the original DB and GT.

[Ssjcell]

I can't really remember the specifics 100 percent , the first time I watched was the cell games and I remember Gohan didn't really get into it. All my friends loved it and I remember Burger King was giving away cards or figures or maybe it was Pizza hut. Then like 7 or 8 years later I was watching toonami and it was the other world tournament and goten became a super saiyan and he was throwing rocks then I was hooked and watched every week until vegeta's final atonement . Then it just stopped and I was frustrated... I then watched Dragonball I think watched all of those or at least a lot of those. Then I found out dbZ was online and I went apeshit watched from radditz til frieza cell so on and by the time I was done the Buu saga continued .

[Kataphrut]

The cliche answer of watching it on TV when I was a kid in the early 2000s. I think I actually started at the very beginning of the Android saga and watched most of the way through Cell. It gets hazy around that because I remember somehow skipping the Cell games and ending up in Buu, but also at some point looping back to the Saiyan saga.

I always seemed to miss out on the biggest moments as a kid; I missed Goku vs Vegeta, all of Namek beyond I think the first few episodes after they landed, most of the Cell Games (I remember the beginning with "Hercule" and his cronies, nothing after) and the Super Buu portion of Buu (though I consider that a dodged bullet). Hilariously, I got really into GT and watched it more diligently than Z (though this was the version that skipped most of the Black Star Dragon Ball stuff) but gave up on it when it got to Super 17.

[BlueBasilisk]

I saw an episode of the Ocean dub on Toonami. It was the episode where Goku falls off of Snake Way. Immediately hooked. I have vague memories of seeing some version of the Boss Rabbit episode in the early morning once before that, and wondering if that little kid and this Goku were the same person or not.

[Jaetinh]

I was like 4 or 5 at my grandfather's house. I was walking by the TV and the German channel RTL II was on. I saw an Asian looking kid flying on a cloud and instantly got hooked. That was the intro song for Dragon Ball and luckily I was able to start from episode 1.

[Woodlandbuckle]

I watched kai on nicktoons and I haven't been hooked on a show like that since. (Except for maybe Adventure Time)

[90sDBZ]

Cartoon Network UK started showing it from March 2000, so around then. I remember watching Goku kicking Nappa's ass, watching the Bulma's bad day episode, watching parts of the Ginyu Force battle and then becoming obsessed with it after seeing Vegeta's death and Goku's vow to finish Frieza. I seriously lost count of the times I rewatched the battles with the Saiyans and Frieza after that. Early Z ftw.

[GreatSaiyaJeff]

It was about 97, I woke up early at Grandma's house to watch saterday morning cartoons but something came on that i didn't recoginize. It was DB, when Bulma and Goku saved the villiage from Oolong and then after that, it was DBZ showing Krillin and Gohan fighting Guldo. I didn't understand what was going on, but I was captivated by it. Then roughly a year later, it was announced to be Toonami and I got excited that I can finally watch the show from the begining and see what would lead up to the Ginyu fight. I have loved the show ever since.

[Lord Beerus]

Stumbled upon the show when it debuted on UK television on Toonami in 2000.